


Burning Roses

by Serriya (Keolah)



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Elves, Gen, Phoenixes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-05
Updated: 2009-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keolah/pseuds/Serriya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sardill brings salvation to one lost world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Roses

The Void was empty, silent alone. Sardill drifted for a time between universes, thoughtful. The time had come to move on. He had been an integral part of the universe. Would it collapse without him? No, he was certain that things would continue on, one way or another. He had become redundant. Another had taken his place. His young protege. She would do fine.

No, he was on his own now. He heeded the words that had led him here. The words of one who was more than he let on. The eternal jokester. The Laughing God, Cegorach, who had jokingly referred to himself only by the ridiculous name of Bob. Even as he drifted, he found he could no longer remember just what those words had been, but only their feeling. Thought, emotion, fleeting. The impetus had been placed in him to act, to do, to be, to shape. He was not one to deny his calling.

Deep in the Void, almost lost to nothingness, he found the remnants of a world. It had been neglected, mistreated, abandoned, cast aside, left to wither alone in the darkness. Like cradling hands of spirit, he enveloped the world, slowly stabilizing it and halting its degeneration. Surely this world was worth saving.

There was quiet. He sensed the surviving souls within breath sighs of relief, and rejoice at their unexpected reprieve. There was no universe here, only one surviving fragment of a world. Had it been left much longer, even that would have been lost. Sardill had to wonder if he had been meant to find this world. If the jester had intentionally placed it in his path. Or perhaps it had been merely a primal coincidence.

It did not matter. This world was his now, and he sensed no powers left here that would protest or resist as he sent in tendrils, rooting himself in the universe and taking godly power over the place. In a way, he became the universe, and from there on, he set about to discovering it from the inside out, starting with attempting to learn why it had been forsaken.

"Kelendra," he murmured. A name. The spirit bearing that name obediently came at his call.

"I am here, my lord," she said. "I am forever grateful for your timely arrival. If there is anything which you require, I will be glad to provide you assistance."

"Good," Sardill replied. "First, tell me what happened here."

"Death. Destruction," Kelendra explained. "There was an unholy war fought between my former masters and invaders from somewhere else, beyond the walls of the world. When the lords of thid world had been obliterated and the lands left a desolate wasteland, the invaders moved on. They did not even remain to rule the place they had conquered. They only came to destroy and consume."

"Who were these invaders?" Sardill wondered. "They were from another universe?"

"I do not know. I had never seen their like before. But all the might of the gods could not stand against them. Without the strength of the Great Lord, the world has been dying. I did what I could and tried to save it, but I fear my best efforts could only slow its inevitable decay. Perhaps by some chance I helped it last just long enough for you to come to our salvation."

"Your gods were clearly inept if they could not stand against outsiders," Sardill said. "Perhaps they divided their power into too small of pieces for any of them to have the proper control required any longer. Regardless, such will not happen again on my watch. I will defend this world and attempt to restore it to a healthy state once again."

"As you say," Kelendra said. "Does it not worry you that other worlds may be in danger? They came from the great darkness outside the world's walls. They were like locusts, and left nothing alive in their path. There is much work ahead if this world is to be restored." Sardill could feel the being's worry and despair, and sighed a little.

"Be at ease. I am but one entity. I cannot defend every universe. Their own gods will need to deal with these invaders as they are able."

"Yes, my lord," Kelendra said, relaxing a little.

"Kelendra," Sardill said, probing lightly at her with his senses. "Why did you not flee when you realized it was hopeless?"

"Life is never hopeless. So long as one being refuses to give in, the darkness will not prevail."

"You have spirit, that much I'll give you," Sardill said. "Come, then. Let us begin."

He reached out with his powers throughout the world, and began to seed it with young, fresh grasses, carpeting the desolate landscape in fields of green. Flowers began to bloom here and there, tiny insects taking flight and buzzing about them as the newborn plants began to breathe and replenish the air.

Soon there would be a place for mortals to live again, whose lost souls drifted through the remnants of their world, what remained of them at least. Far fewer than there should have been, perhaps these were the only ones strong enough to survive given the complete breakdown of the world. There was no peaceful afterlife for them here, only an eternal limbo of despair. Perhaps the real wonder was that any of them had managed to hold on.

As Sardill populated the world with shrubs, trees, birds, and other animals, he felt it was like stretching muscles that had been only ill-used before. He had never let on to his former acquaintances just what he was capable of. As well that he had let them keep guessing. Maybe they had thought he could do just about anything he wanted to. Limits were for those who weren't tied into the basic foundation of the universe.

Not that he didn't have to be careful, regardless. He made sure not to try to rebuild the world too quickly, catching the loose souls and gathering them up in an ethereal mansion to relax and be well until their rebirth. A well-earned vacation, and life anew if they so chose it. He let centuries pass in the physical world as he rebuilt the ecosystem from the ground up.

Time was irrelevent. He absently had to wonder what might be happening in the universe of his origin, and had to remind himself that it didn't really matter. As this world was not connected to it in any way, it flowed on separate time. A minute or a million years might be passing back at home, but it didn't really matter.

Why did he keep pining after home? He wasn't going back there again. He had drawn up his connections to its places of power, and would no longer have the same capabilities there anymore, and he doubted anyone would much appreciate his return. He would be vulnerable and weak, unless whoever had taken power there was gracious enough to allow him his position of power back again. No, he had burned that bridge and left it behind, with little regret.

That didn't stop him from shaping this world in some ways to remind him of home. Nostalgia, if nothing else. The same familiar plants and animals. Oak trees and squirrels, wolves and foxes, deer and daffodils. Sometimes it was the little things that gave a spirit comfort.

"These things which you have given to the world are strange to me, my lord," Kelendra said. "Are they things which you have brought from the place of your origin?"

"Yes," Sardill replied.

"May I ask why you did not seek to put the world back the way it had been before instead?"

"I will put the world in any shape I please," Sardill said. "Expect to find more things that are different than you are used to when I have all set in order once again."

"As you say," Kelendra said dubiously. "I would not seek to undermine or question your grace and judgment, my lord. But may I put in but one small request?"

"Ask," Sardill said.

"I would request that you restore the burning flowers."

"Show me."

"Very well." The spirit brought forth an image of a vibrant rose in red, orange, and yellow, giving off an uncanny warmth from its blossoms. Sardill found it intriguing. He could also sense that they meant something to her personally, but he did not care to probe deeper.

"You will have your burning roses," Sardill said.

Kelendra prostrated herself to him and said, "Many thanks to you, mighty lord. If nothing else, these will serve as some memorial to the world as it once was."

He realized with a soft sigh that he should probably respect the being's wishes, even if she was quite grateful at her salvation and highly unlikely to seek to turn on him. "Is there anything else which you would request? Any animals or intelligent species you would prefer to see live again?"

"I--" Kelendra hesitated. She was a little afraid of him, and more than a little uncertain. "I would not seek to overstep my bounds, my lord."

"I'm asking," Sardill pressed.

"Well... alright," Kelendra relented, relaxing a little. "Let the phoenix be reborn." Graceful birds of fire, the size of a heron, born from ashes and dying in flame. This was one he was familiar with, but although his home had had legends of it, it had not quite existed in that form in that universe.

"The phoenix will live again," Sardill said.

Kelendra might have hugged him, and he felt that she might love him just for that. She had been closely associated with these things in the previous world, he could sense. She was a spirit of fire and passion, burning with a thousand lifetimes. It also did much to shake her of her fear and replace it with true loyalty instead. He had ruled by fear for so long, it would take some getting used to ruling by love instead.

The key, he thought, would be in holding back, and making it seem as though no quarter would be given, and then turning around and giving more than was expected. Kelendra and the lesser spirits could be mollified easily enough. The mortals might pray until they turned blue, but it would give all the more meaning to the one in a million prayers he might decide to answer, only when he felt it would be interesting to do so. For he would certainly watch. He was starting to get used to the idea of omniscience, as well.

As the first newborn phoenix set to flight on the winds of the new world, Sardill set his thoughts to populating the world with sentient beings. Humans, he thought, for one. Ubiquitous and endlessly adaptable, with a spirit and drive of a sort foreign to longer lived species. There would always be a place for humans in the universe.

Sardill let millennia pass as he planned and prepared for the introduction of sentients, ensuring that the system was stable and that it would be ready for them. He selected some of the best willing candidates from among the souls waiting in the spirit mansion. They would be the elves, Eldar, El'dari, whichever they decided to call themselves. They would bring in some stability from their longer lifespans and outlooks. The humans would all be new souls. The elves would only remember the old world as a fading dream.

He shaped the elves from trees, a full four dozen of them, and laid them out neatly in a glade. "Live," he whispered. "Breathe. Wake."

The elves took their first breaths in their new lives, and opened their eyes, looking around them in confusion and wonderment. They were old souls, but this was still very new to them. As they rose unsteadily to their feet, they looked over and saw the shimmering figure of Sardill, purplish and only vaguely humanoid.

"I grant you these gifts, of thought and language," Sardill said. "You will have the powers of the mind and the knowledge to build and shape a civilization. You will be the forerunners of the new world. There will be others. Look for them, seek them out, guide them, and let them grow."

"Thank you," one of the elves said. "We will not seek to disappoint."

As Sardill vanished from their sight, the elves began to speak amongst one another, in the tongue which he had given them. The ancient tongue of the elves of his own world was given them, as he thought fitting. Then, as they spoke, they went silent in awe as a phoenix flew overhead, gasping and gazing in wonderment. This was, they agreed, a good omen. A very good omen.

* * *

The early elves were nomadic. They were foragers, gatherers, hunters, and trappers. They wandered through the wilderness, following their food supplies, rarely settling for long in one place. Nevertheless, they developed a rich culture of oral tradition, and developed their own hauntingly beautiful styles of music.

The elves explored the world. They climbed the mountains that made up walls of the world and touched the sky. They could not get close enough to the sun, but they believed that it was a mighty phoenix, the mother of all life, and the stars were her eggs, shimmering in the night and waiting to be born. Sardill didn't bother to correct them. Beliefs were an important part of culture, and reality rarely got in the way of religion.

Not that the stars were really stars or the sun really a sun, strictly speaking. They were there for light and warmth, and little else, since there were no other worlds in this universe. Perhaps in time he would be able to allow the world to grow and encompass multiple planets, as it probably once had in the past, but at the moment this remnant was all he had.


End file.
